Australian industry funds Maritime Super and Hostplus have agreed to pool assets as an alternative to the wave of fund mergers washing over Australia's retirement system in recent years.
The investment outsourcing partnership will give Maritime Super's more than 24,000 participants access to a suite of strong investment offerings while retaining the tailored services its participants "expect and deserve from a niche fund such as ours," Maritime Super CEO Peter Robertson said in a news release.
Sydney-based Maritime and Melbourne-based Hostplus combined have A$61 billion ($46.8 billion) in assets, investing Maritime's roughly A$6 billion total in Hostplus's A$55 billion pooled superannuation trusts.
David Elia, Hostplus CEO, in the same release said the pooled superannuation trust structure Hostplus established several years ago provides "a clear and distinctively viable alternative to mergers and acquisitions," especially for smaller funds that, aside from investment scale, are well-performing and delivering good and valued member outcomes.
Hostplus had been seen as one of Australia's more vulnerable super funds last year in the wake of government moves announced to help super fund participants get through the pandemic crisis by granting early access to A$10,000 to A$20,000 of their retirement savings. Instead, the Hostplus-Maritime Super news release noted that for the financial year ended June 30, Hostplus' AUM grew by nearly A$4 billion, or 8%.
A spokesman for Maritime Super said the fund's mandates with external managers will be wound down in time for its assets to be moved into Hostplus's pooled superannuation trusts on April 30.
Maritime's most recent annual report listed 46 allocations with external managers as of June 30. Only two of those managers — T. Rowe Price and Henderson Global Investors — were overseeing more than 5% of the total portfolio each.
